Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor, Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance, Dr Kennedy Swarats­ingh, is as­sur­ing To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine that the is­land will re­ceive a fair share when the na­tion­al bud­get is pre­sent­ed in the com­ing weeks.

On Tues­day, Au­gus­tine warned that Gov­ern­ment would “hear his mouth” if To­ba­go re­ceived an un­fair al­lo­ca­tion in the up­com­ing fis­cal pack­age.

“If in the up­com­ing bud­get we get $4.03 out of $100 on de­vel­op­ment, then they will hear my mouth the same way as Trinida­di­ans have heard my mouth for the last three years,” Au­gus­tine said.

For the 2024–2025 fis­cal year, the THA re­ceived a bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion of $2.599 bil­lion—ap­prox­i­mate­ly 4.35 per cent of the to­tal na­tion­al bud­get. This was sig­nif­i­cant­ly less than the $3.956 bil­lion it had re­quest­ed. Au­gus­tine has re­peat­ed­ly ar­gued that To­ba­go’s de­vel­op­ment needs, par­tic­u­lar­ly in tourism, re­quire a much larg­er share of na­tion­al fund­ing.

Au­gus­tine has al­so cit­ed the rec­om­men­da­tion of the Dis­pute Res­o­lu­tion Com­mit­tee that To­ba­go should re­ceive an al­lo­ca­tion clos­er to the me­di­an of 5 to 6.9 per cent of the na­tion­al bud­get.

Asked to re­spond to Au­gus­tine’s con­cerns, Swarats­ingh said: “To­ba­go is a very im­por­tant con­stituent group and a very im­por­tant part of the na­tion­al land­scape. I wouldn’t dis­cuss num­bers be­cause that’s not my place—that’s for the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance to dis­cuss—but I am sure Mr Far­ley knows how im­por­tant they are and all that we do here is for na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment of both Trinidad and To­ba­go, so I’m sure his views will be tak­en in­to ac­count.”

Swarats­ingh said Au­gus­tine is with­in his rights to ex­press con­cerns and he is con­fi­dent the Fi­nance Min­is­ter will take them in­to con­sid­er­a­tion. The Gov­ern­ment has not yet an­nounced the date for the bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion al­though the Prime Min­is­ter has hint­ed at ear­ly Oc­to­ber.

Asked whether al­lo­ca­tions will be made to be­gin 10 per cent wage ne­go­ti­a­tions for pub­lic ser­vants in the up­com­ing fis­cal year, Swarats­ingh said: “I think it has been a trav­es­ty that pub­lic sec­tor work­ers have not had an in­crease since 2013, so I mean that was some­thing that the Prime Min­is­ter com­mit­ted to and ob­vi­ous­ly some­thing that is con­tin­u­ing to get our at­ten­tion.”

How­ev­er, he stopped short of giv­ing a di­rect an­swer, say­ing it was for the Fi­nance Min­is­ter to re­veal such de­tails.

“It is not for me to dis­cuss things that may or may not come. That is for the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance. All I can tell you is that it is some­thing ur­gent, some­thing im­por­tant and some­thing the Prime Min­is­ter and the gov­ern­ment com­mit­ted to in its cam­paign and as we go about gov­ern­ing now,” he said.

Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) Pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas has main­tained she is con­fi­dent the gov­ern­ment will ho­n­our its cam­paign promise to pub­lic ser­vants in the new fi­nan­cial year (Oc­to­ber 1, 2025–Sep­tem­ber 30, 2026).